SAP CEO Pushes AI Turnaround With New Teams, Use-Based Pricing

SAP SE’s Chief Executive Officer Christian Klein is setting up a new unit with hundreds of people to push the adoption of its artificial intelligence features and plans to overhaul how it charges clients as the technology threatens its legacy subscription model.

As more customers adopt SAP’s new tools in the coming years, the company will charge customers based on AI consumption, moving away from regular software subscriptions, Klein said in an interview in Berlin this week. The company will also create “forward deployed engineering” teams starting in July that will work with customers to develop its AI applications on top of SAP’s technology, he said.